Last week I was moderating and speaking at the DCD Shanghai 2017 conference, which was part of the inaugural China Data Center Week. This was the perfect place to be for any organization that is interested in working more closely with Chinese data center consumers, both domestically and overseas, as these impressive companies continue to grow rapidly.
DCD has organized events in China for the past ten years, and I have watched the country mature into a data center powerhouse.
Over the last two years, the DCD team has worked very hard to position the events in Shanghai and Beijing as meeting points for international thought leaders to exchange ideas with their Chinese counterparts, providing a very unique experience for the attending delegates.
The week’s activities included data center tours of Tencent and OneAsia Shanghai data centers, training courses, lunch briefings and workshops, all geared towards sharing knowledge between Chinese and international experts.
Nicola Hayes, managing director for the European Data Center Association, opened the conference with a global overview of the market, estimating the annual growth rate in the Asia Pacific to be around 27 percent, forecast to exceed the size of the European market by 2020. Not unexpectedly, China is predicted to have the highest growth rate.
The audience then heard from Scott Noteboom, CEO of Litbit, on how machine learning and AI are changing data center operations. This session focused on how the market is already adopting game-changing technology, and paved the way for two lively panel sessions covering cloud computing and the future of data centers.
Is it possible to harness these emerging technologies to create a dynamic, scalable data center that is responsive to today’s changing business needs? It was really quite something to see how much the market has changed and developed since I was at the same event last year.
Other event highlights included two panels promoting business across borders. The first looked at the differences between colocation and cloud services in China and Europe, and the second - led by Dale Sartor from Lawrence Berkley National Laboratories, with participants from Intel, Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba - discussed global harmonization around liquid cooling. This, combined with the CXO Summit and the Tencent Tech Summit, made way for one of the best events on international cooperation that I have been to in a while.
There are huge opportunities for overseas operators interested in attracting and doing business with the rapidly expanding companies from China. If that describes you, then you should really consider participating at DCD Beijing in November.
Meanwhile, next stop for me is DCD Bangalore. I am looking forward to getting a deeper understanding of India, another huge market that DCD is looking to open up to the international stage.
If you are looking at the Indian data center market, you should be in Bangalore on the 19th and 20th of July. Amongst local and international luminaries, we will have an old friend of DCD and the former CEO of Digital Realty Trust, Michael Foust, presenting in his capacity as Chairman of Bridge Data Centers.
Foust’s presentation will be entitled: ‘The Data Centre Maturity Model – An investor perspective of Infrastructure for the Digital Economy.’
For more information on the Indian market, visit www.dcd-india.com
Dan Scarbrough co-founded DCD in 1998 and led the company as CEO until 2013